I am an award-winning journalist and a New York Times best selling author. My latest book is Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game, published by Ballantine in November 2013. My other books include The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes at the Super Bowl and Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument. For five years I wrote the By the Numbers sports analytics column for the Wall Street Journal. I have written about sports, music, entertainment, pop culture and politics for a wide variety of national publications including The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post and The Village Voice. I'm a graduate of The University of Chicago and I live in Montclair N.J. with my wife, two kids, and my golden retriever, Tessie.
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The Top 10 Coolest Christmas Songs That You'd Actually Play In February

Most Christmas songs are like fruitcake. Something you endure in the spirit of the holidays, but you wouldn’t even consider induging in come February. But believe it or not, are actually a few Christmas songs with enough craft, enough soul, enough edge that you’d he happy to hear them on your Ipod any day of the year. Here’s my top 10 countdown of great songs that just happen to be about Christmas.

10. Ramones: “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight) The Ramones apply their own kind of Wall of Sound to a Christmas song that’s even cooler than Phil Spector’s classics of the 1960s.

9. Frank Sinatra “Let it Snow:” Frank Sinatra signing a Sammy Kahn/Jule Styne song written in southern California on one of the hottest days or record? What’s not to like? Sinatra’s performance fits the song like a glove.

8. Lou Monte: “Dominic the Donkey:” Of all the outright silly Christmas songs, this 1960 classic by Lou Monte is the most gloriously goofy. But couplets like this one–”a pair of shoes for Louie and a dress for Josephine. The label on the inside says it’s made in Brook-a-lyn”–remind us that Christmas predated Toys R Us and the Apple Store.

7. The Pogues “A Fairytale of New York:” Ask anyone in the UK of a certain age what’s their favorite Christmas song, and they’re likely to cite this Pogues classic.With good reason. This song captures the melancholy that’s part and parcel of the season, but it retains a smidgen of hope.

6. John Fahey: “Joy to the World:” No guitarist ever played with timing more brilliantly than the late John Fahey. Here he deconstructs Handel’s melody in a way that lets you listen to this timeless tune afresh.

5. Chuck Berry: “Run Run Rudolph” Berry might be America’s most underrated songwriter, and this sly and playful take on the commercialization of Christmas is a worthy rockification of the Gene Autry classic.

4. Big Star: “Jesus Christ” A refreshingly unpolished, irony-free original from the last of three albums by these star-crossed alt-rock pioneers.

3. Tom Waits “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis:” From Jesus in the Manger to Dickens’ Tiny Tim to Frosty the Snowman, Christmas is all about stories, and no stories are more powerful than the ones we tell ourselves. “Charlie, for Chrissake, if you want to know the truth of it, I don’t have a husband, he don’t play the trombone. Need to borrow money to pay this lawyer. I’ll be eligible for parole come Valentine’s Day.” As Waits has said elsewhere, it’s a sad and beautiful world.